Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
And I want it to go away. I want this entire chapter of my existence erased.
I want to never think about the girl who lived here again.
But I'm not leaving my laptop behind. There are forty-seven complete stories saved in its hard drive. Plus another dozen I never finished. Stories I poured myself into during the worst nights, when writing was the only thing that kept me tethered to something resembling purpose.
Those stories were written by a mentally ill woman who lived in darkness and filth and couldn't see a way out. But they're still mine. They still matter. The words themselves—the characters, the scenes, the twisted beautiful connections I built between broken people—those are real, even if the person who wrote them was barely holding on.
I'm taking them with me. They get to survive, even if she doesn't.
I crawl inside the glamping tent and there it is, right in the center of the space. The lid is open, screen dark and lifeless after months of neglect, battery long since drained. But it's positioned deliberately, waiting for me to find it.
I lie back on the soft rug that came with the tent and stare up at the canopy of fairy lights strung overhead. They're dead too, just dim bulbs hanging limp against white fabric.
But I can see where Caleb strung them, how carefully he arranged them to create the illusion of stars. The same way he arranged everything else in this bizarre, thoughtful, completely unhinged gesture.
He saw me—actually saw me, beneath the performance and the desperate scrambling for normalcy.
And yes, the methods were... unconventional doesn't even begin to cover it. He orchestrated a fake auction where I thought I was selling myself to the highest bidder.
He made me come so hard I blacked out, over and over until I forgot my own name.
He sent me into that goddamn maze—my own twisted creation made flesh—where masked men were supposed to hunt me through bamboo corridors while his voice guided me deeper into manufactured terror.
I still don't fully understand what happened that day. Who that Russian man was or why he was there.
It's all very fucked up.
Top to bottom insane.
Certifiably unhinged by any reasonable metric.
But… if you read between the lines and see the subtext underneath… it makes sense.
He didn't actually buy me. The auction was theater, carefully staged to make me feel something—anything—again.
The hunt wasn't real either. That maze was a retelling of something I loved dearly, but had to throw away because it broke all the rules and filled me with shame.
He didn't call me his good little slut because he thinks I'm some disposable fucktoy. He said it because he knew—somehow knew—that I needed someone to see the darkness I'd been hiding and call it beautiful instead of broken.
He did all that batshit crazy stuff because he... believed in me.
The man is sick. Absolutely fucked in the head to a degree that probably requires institutionalization and medication.
But he saw me.
He replaced my pathetic blanket fort, a literal representation of my own deteriorating mental health, with a luxury glamping tent.
He put up an actual Christmas tree and filled it with ornaments I chose and desperately wanted, but could never afford.
He left cookies and milk out for Santa, then took a bite and sip so I'd understand exactly what this was.
Not a cage.
Not a trap.
A gift.
And that's all before he started filling bank accounts with endless millions of dollars. So many fucking dollars, I'm probably going to prison for tax evasion because I just keep ignoring it.
I came here for two things and now it's time to go.
I push the laptop out of the tent as I scramble out, then go over to the little tree—completely brown and dead—and pick off all the ornaments, shoving them into my massive purse.
Then I take one last look around before leaving, closing the door behind me.
It's over.
Whatever Caleb was to me, it's done. I've moved on.
But the man deserves credit where credit is due.
Without him…
I can't even think it, but I must.
Without him… I'd probably be dead.
I dump everything on my kitchen counter—laptop, dead ornaments, the weight of my entire former existence—and head straight for my bedroom.
I strip out of my sundress and dig through the activewear section until I find the black leggings with the mesh cutouts running down the sides and a matching sports bra that actually fits properly. There's a cropped hoodie too—charcoal gray, expensive fabric that moves like water.
In the mirror, I look... different.
Not just the platinum hair or the new clothes.
Something about my posture has changed. My shoulders don't curl inward anymore. I'm not trying to disappear into myself.
I grab my new gym bag, fill it with the essentials, then I head out.
Downtown Idaho Falls isn't exactly bustling, but the afternoon sunlight makes everything feel lighter somehow. People pass me on the sidewalk and I don't immediately catalog all the ways they're judging me.